World War I and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes

New solutions to Croatia’s problems became possible with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary during World War I. However, Croatia’s postwar future was threatened by the 1915 Treaty of London, which promised Italy extensive Habsburg territories on the Adriatic in return for entering the war on the Allied side. Representatives of the Habsburg South Slavs in exile, led by the former Coalition politicians Ante Trumbić and Franjo Supilo, set up a Yugoslav Committee to promote the cause of a new Yugoslav state that was to be based on the national unity of the South Slavs and on the principle of self-determination. In July 1917 the leaders of the Yugoslav Committee and representatives of the Serbian government-in-exile signed the Corfu Declaration, announcing the intention of founding a unified South Slav state at the end of the war as a democratic, constitutional, and parliamentary monarchy under the Karageorgević dynasty. The agreement with Serbia would save Croatia from being partitioned by the Allies as part of vanquished Austria-Hungary, but the declaration did not specify whether the new state would be a federation of equal partners or would merely represent an extension of the Serbian administrative system.

At the same time, a movement for unification developed among South Slav politicians still living under Habsburg authority in Croatia. With the Habsburg monarchy collapsing, the peasantry in revolt, and the Serbian and Italian armies advancing into Croatian territory, the Croatian Sabor voted in October 1918 to break relations with Austria-Hungary; declared the unification of the lands of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in an independent Croatian state; announced the incorporation of Croatia into a South Slav state; and transferred its power to the newly created National Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in Zagreb. One dissenting voice was that of Stjepan Radić, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, who opposed unconditional unification with no reference to the will of the people of Croatia and with no guarantees of national equality in the future state. In November 1918 representatives of the National Council, the Yugoslav Committee, and the Serbian government signed the Geneva declaration calling for the establishment of a South Slav state with a form of government to be decided by a national Constituent Assembly. On Dec. 1, 1918, delegates of the National Council met Serbia’s regent, Alexander I, to affiliate themselves to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

Yugoslavia, 1918–41

In many respects, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes represented an expansion of Serbian hegemony over new territories, and, in Croatia, discontent with this arrangement was demonstrated by the massive electoral success of Radić’s Croatian Peasant Party. Radić refused to accept the unification act, calling instead for an independent Croatian peasant republic. In elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1920, his party received the fourth largest bloc of votes, but Radić boycotted the assembly, thus making possible the adoption of a constitution in 1921 that imposed a highly centralized administration on the new state. In the following decades the political system of the kingdom came to be controlled by Serbian centralists, and opposition in Croatia, dominated by Radić and the Peasant Party, focused on demands for a federal system that would allow Croatia autonomy. By 1928, when Radić and four other Croatian deputies were shot on the floor of the parliament by a Montenegrin deputy, national conflict had brought the political system to a standstill. Nonetheless, some progress had been made in agrarian reform, with peasants receiving land expropriated from large estates.

Under the dictatorship established in 1929, Alexander attempted to override national divisions by introducing a new supranational patriotism symbolized by the new name of Yugoslavia. The internal borders of the country were redrawn, ignoring historical divisions, so that Croatia vanished into several new provinces named after rivers and natural features. However, Croatian nationalism and opposition to the state system were not eradicated by this policy of unitarism—and neither was Serbian hegemony, which simply continued under the name of Yugoslavism. Political repression bred extremism among some opponents of the regime. In 1934 Alexander was assassinated as the result of a plot hatched by the Croatian Ustaše (“Insurgents”), a separatist terrorist association founded in 1929 by Ante Pavelić and enjoying the support of Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Unlike the majority of Croats, who still believed in a federal solution, the Ustaše insisted that only the destruction of Yugoslavia could liberate Croatia.

The new regent, Prince Paul, prevented the restoration of democratic government, though he permitted some relaxation in political life. The desire for political reform led to the formation of a united Yugoslav opposition, which argued for the reinstatement of democracy and for constitutional reform. In Croatia this opposition included the Peasant Party, now led by Vladko Maček. In the elections of 1938, the Peasant Party received 80 percent of the vote in Croatia and Dalmatia. Faced with such evidence of popular support for the opposition program, Prince Paul encouraged negotiations between the government and Maček. These culminated in the Sporazum (“Agreement”) of Aug. 26, 1939, which created an autonomous Croatia that was self-governing except in defense and foreign affairs. This did not solve the other national problems of the Yugoslav state, of course, and it provoked resentment among the Serbs, even in the opposition.

World War II

War broke out soon after the Sporazum was signed, and Yugoslavia declared its neutrality; invasion, occupation, and partition followed in 1941. In their campaign against Yugoslavia, the Germans exploited Croatian discontent, presenting themselves as liberators and inciting Croats in the armed forces to mutiny. In April 1941 Germans and Italians set up the Independent State of Croatia, which also embraced Bosnia and Herzegovina and those parts of Dalmatia that had not been ceded to Italy. Though in fact this state was under occupation by the German and Italian armies, Pavelić’s Ustaše were put into power—a takeover facilitated by the passivity of Maček and of the Roman Catholic archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. Initially, there was enthusiasm for independence, but, once in power, the Ustaše ruthlessly persecuted Serbs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and antifascist Croats. The Ustaše planned to eliminate Croatia’s Serb minority partly by conversion to Catholicism, partly by expulsion, and partly by extermination. As many as 350,000 to 450,000 victims were killed in Ustaše massacres and in the notorious concentration camp at Jasenovac.

Sporadic resistance, particularly by Croatia’s Serbs, began almost immediately, but it was the communist Partisans, under Josip Broz Tito (himself a Croat), who provided the resistance with leadership and a program. Croatian Serbs joined the Partisans in flight from Ustaše terror; antifascist Croats were attracted by the broad popular front and by the Partisans’ emphasis on national self-determination; and both groups supported the proposed reordering of postwar Yugoslavia along federal lines. Mass enlistment in their ranks made the Partisans more successful in Croatia than anywhere else outside their mountain strongholds. By 1944 most of Croatia—apart from the main cities—was liberated territory, and Croats were joining the Partisans’ ranks in large numbers. As the war neared its end, however, many Croats, especially those compromised by involvement with the Ustaše regime or those who opposed the communists, fled north along with other refugees toward the Allied armies. British commanders refused to accept their surrender and handed them over to the Partisans, who took a merciless revenge. Tens of thousands, including many civilians, were subsequently slaughtered on forced marches and in death camps.

Yugoslavia, 1945–91

After 1945, Croatia was a republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This new federation was intended to satisfy the national aspirations of all its peoples, but a centrally controlled Communist Party and a revived push for Yugoslav unity undermined this structure. The effects were felt in Croatia in such matters as the purge in 1948 of the Croatian communist Andrija Hebrang and others who had supported Croatian national interests; in the Serbian dominance of the party, army, and police; and in the economic centralization that appropriated part of the republic’s income for investment in other parts of the federation.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Yugoslav government instituted a number of economic reforms and attempts at political liberalization and decentralization. Encouraged in Croatia by a reformist party leadership under Miko Tripalo and Savka Dabčević-Kučar, these reforms contributed to the flowering of a “Croatian Spring” in 1969–71. The movement took the shape of a cultural and national revival, expressed in large part through the activities of the cultural organization Matica Hrvatska, but it soon culminated in calls for greater Croatian autonomy. Warning of the danger of civil war, Tito intervened and reimposed “democratic centralism” through a series of purges and trials that decimated the ranks of Croatian politicians and intellectuals. The political effects were not alleviated by the 1974 constitution, which granted greater autonomy to the republics, because autonomy was limited in Croatia by centralized party control.

This control began to break apart in the late 1980s, however. In 1989, as communist hegemony was challenged throughout eastern Europe, the Slovene and Croatian communists sought free multiparty elections. The right-wing, nationalist Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (HDZ; Croatian Democratic Union), led by Franjo Tudjman (a former party member who had been jailed during the suppression of the Croatian Spring), was victorious in the Croatian elections of 1990. The Serb minority was deeply alarmed by the actions of the new government, which purged Serbs from public administration, especially the police. Serbs’ fears also were aroused by accusations, especially from Belgrade, that Croatian nationalism meant a return to fascism and the anti-Serb violence of World War II. When independence was declared on June 25, 1991, armed clashes spread throughout Serb enclaves in Croatia. This provided a pretext for the Yugoslav People’s Army to launch an attack on Croatia; in the ensuing war, the city of Vukovar in Slavonia was leveled by bombardment, Dubrovnik and other Dalmatian cities were shelled, and about one-third of Croatian territory was occupied. Warfare was halted by an agreement whereby foreign troops sponsored by the United Nations were installed in the disputed areas in order to stabilize and demilitarize them. Although Croatia was granted international recognition in 1992, the government’s control over its own territories remained incomplete.

Early in 1995 the Croatian government regained military control of western Slavonia and central Croatia from rebel Serbs. In 1996 Serbian President Slobodan Milošević agreed to give up claims to eastern Slavonia, withdrew Yugoslav troops under a United Nations mandate, and established full diplomatic relations with Croatia. Croatia recovered full sovereignty over eastern Slavonia in 1998, and, with the withdrawal of UN troops from the Prelavka Peninsula in 2002, Croatia finally had full control of its territory. Tudjman died in December 1999, and Stipe Mesić, who had broken with the HDZ over Tudjman’s autocratic rule, was elected president in February 2000. Mesić quickly moved to stamp out corruption and to improve Croatia’s relations with its neighbours, but he failed to deliver on promises of early entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the European Union (EU). Croatia continued to suffer deep economic and political divisions, particularly over cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which indicted several individuals considered Croatian national heroes.

With the success of the HDZ in the 2003 parliamentary elections, Croatia’s broad-based coalition government fell, and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader became prime minister of a new centre-right government. In 2004 Croatia became an official EU candidate, but negotiations were postponed in 2005 after the ICTY raised concerns about the country’s commitment to bringing war criminals to justice. EU officials also questioned Croatia’s dedication to eliminating corruption. By the following year, however, several key suspects had been arrested or tried for war crimes, and the government had adopted a strong anticorruption strategy; these developments bolstered hopes that Croatia could join the EU by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the country’s economy, helped by the spectacular growth of tourism, began to improve. The status of ethnic minorities also apparently had improved since the 1990s: the HDZ-led coalition government that came to power in 2008 was the first to include an ethnic Serb in its cabinet. On April 1, 2009, NATO officially welcomed Croatia as a member of the alliance.

By mid-2009 the outlook was not as rosy. Although neighbouring Slovenia—a member of both NATO and the EU—had agreed to Croatia’s NATO membership, it continued to block Croatian accession negotiations with the EU, claiming that the countries’ ongoing border dispute needed to be resolved first. (The dispute, focused on the maritime border in the Bay of Piran, originated in 1991, when both countries seceded from Yugoslavia.) Adding to Croatia’s problems, the growing global financial crisis caused the economy to contract sharply during the first half of 2009. That year Croatia faced yet another hurdle when on July 1 Prime Minister Sanader resigned.